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Morgan had planned to produce just 400 Three Wheelers, yet it has already sold 1,400. New customers find themselves on a waiting list several months long. The firm is even considering an electric version of the vehicle. Morgan puts the success of the car, which costs around £32,000, down to the fact that it harks back to a bygone era while providing the “exhilaration” of a modern sports car.

The vehicles are made to order, with customers invited to choose from 12 colours, different types of leather and even optional features such as ceramic exhaust pipes. The cars’ ash frames are each crafted from wood from Lincoln or Norfolk.

Jon Wells, the head of design at Morgan, said the idea for the new vehicle surfaced in 2009.

“We thought, 'wouldn’t it be nice to have a centenary vehicle which harked back to our heritage?’ ” he said. “Initially we thought it would certainly generate some success.

“We have quite a loyal customer base and we were thinking in the realm of 400 to 500 cars sold in the initial spike. But then we sold 1,000 cars in the first year and that was much more than we expected.

"We are building about 500 a year. It represents about 50 per cent of our production now, which is a lot more than we expected.”

Mr Wells said the Three Wheeler was most often a secondary car for motorists and was seen as a “luxury item”. He acknowledged that three-wheel cars had been made famous by Reliant, notably in the form of the shabby yellow Reliant Regal van driven by Derek Trotter in Only Fools and Horses.

But he insisted that the Three Wheeler has garnered a prestige far removed from Del Boy’s car, not least because it has two wheels at the front, rather than at the back, meaning “stability is not an issue”.

The Three Wheeler, which has a motorcycle engine, is also designed to have the appearance of a fighter plane, with the driver’s seat ensconced in a leather-clad “cockpit”. The starter switch has even been designed to resemble a “bomb release” button.

The Rev Adrian Murray-Leslie, chairman of the Morgan Three Wheeler Club, is a former vicar who used to drive around his parish in Edale, Derbyshire, in his Morgan 1928 Super Aero.

The 67-year-old is now increasingly seeing the Three Wheeler at rallies, while his club’s treasurer is among the growing ranks of owners.

Morgan was founded in 1909 by Henry Frederick Stanley Morgan. Last year, Charles Morgan, the firm’s strategy director and the last family member working there full-time, was sacked in a move that both he and the company refused to discuss. The firm is still owned by the family, with Mr Morgan holding around 30 per cent of the stock.

Morgan halted production of the original Three Wheeler in 1953, partly due to material shortages in the years after the Second World War and partly because of the rising popularity of four-wheel cars. The new Three Wheeler was launched in 2011 after a hiatus of almost six decades.

Owners have insisted it can “hold its own” against traditional cars. Lee Cliff, 54, sold his Porsche Carrera 4 to buy a Three Wheeler as a second car to his Mercedes. He bought one from a new batch last year and has taken it on journeys around the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales as well as to circuits such as Silverstone.

He said: “I liked the idea of the old Three Wheeler but they were so impractical I forgot about it. I wanted modern mechanics. Once I got a test drive of the new model I more or less put a deposit down straight away because it is such a hoot to drive.”

With only two seats, it has become, he said, a “bone of contention” with his wife, as it cannot accommodate the couple and their daughter at the same time. But he added: “You always find the long way home – never the most direct way. Hopefully it will be a future classic.”

The innovation has, however, caused some friction among Morgan enthusiasts who fear it is little more than a gimmick.

“The responses aren’t always rational and are rooted in the fear that the things that you are used to are changing,” Mr Murray-Leslie said.

“Apparently there is one person who each time he gets the club bulletin goes through it with a pair of scissors and cuts out all the references to the new models.”